Mathematician Quotes - Page 15

• The only reason psychology students don't have to do more and harder mathematics than physics students is because the mathematicians haven't yet discovered ways of dealing with problems as hard as those in psychology.

  John G. Kemeny

  Psychology, Way, Students

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• One feature which will probably most impress the mathematician accustomed to the rapidity and directness secured by the generality of modern methods is the deliberation with which Archimedes approaches the solution of any one of his main problems.

  Thomas Little Heath

  Problem, Modern, Method

  Archimedes, Sir Thomas Little Heath (2002). “The Works of Archimedes”, p.6, Courier Corporation

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• Because Mathematicians frequently make use of Time, they ought to have a distinct idea of the meaning of that Word, otherwise they are Quacks.

  Isaac Barrow

  Ideas, Use, Quacks

  Isaac Barrow (1735). “Geometrical Lectures: Explaining the Generation, Nature and Properties of Curve Lines”, p.4

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• Nobody defines it as something women shouldn't be doing. In a way, there are more mathematicians, more doctors, more scientists in India than there are in this country. We even had a woman head of state, and that's something the United States has yet to catch up with.

  Vandana Shiva

  Country, Doctors, India

  Source: scottlondon.com

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• [John Wheeler] rejuvenated general relativity; he made it an experimental subject and took it away from the mathematicians

  Freeman Dyson

  Made, Subjects, Relativity

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• I never got a pass mark in math... Just imagine - mathematicians now use my prints to illustrate their books. Funny me consorting with all these learned folks, as though I were their long lost brother. I guess they are unaware of the fact that I am ignorant about the whole thing.

  M. C. Escher

  Beauty, Art, Brother

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• A mathematician is only perfect insofar as he is a perfect man, sensitive to the beauty of truth.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Men, Perfect, Sensitive

  "Maxims and Reflections". Book by by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, translated by Elisabeth Stopp. Maxim 609, 1998.

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• I am exclusively occupied with the problem of gravitation and hope with the help of a local mathematician friend [Marcel Grossman] to overcome all the difficulties. One thing is certain, however, that never in life have I been quite so tormented. A great respect for mathematics has been instilled within me, the subtler aspects of which, in my stupidity, I regarded until now as pure luxury.

  Albert Einstein

  Learning, Science, Discovery

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• The last level of metaphor in the Alice books is this: that life, viewed rationally and without illusion, appears to be a nonsense tale told by an idiot mathematician. At the heart of things science finds only a mad, never-ending quadrille of Mock Turtle Waves and Gryphon Particles. For a moment the waves and particles dance in grotesque, inconceivably complex patterns capable of reflecting on their own absurdity.

  Martin Gardner

  Book, Heart, Turtles

  "The Annotated Alice". Book by Martin Gardner (Introduction), 1960.

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• I would not dare to say that there is a direct relation between mathematics and madness, but there is no doubt that great mathematicians suffer from maniacal characteristics, delirium and symptoms of schizophrenia.

  John Forbes Nash

  Math, Suffering, Doubt

  Statement of 1996, as quoted in "Dr. Riemann's Zeros" by Karl Sabbagh, (p. 88), 2003.

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• To finish the moment, to find the journey's end in every step of the road, to live the greatest number of good hours, is wisdom. It is not the part of men, but of fanatics, or of mathematicians, if you will, to say, that, the shortness of life considered, it is not worth caring whether for so short a duration we were sprawling in want, or sitting high. Since our office is with moments, let us husband them.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Life, Wisdom, Time

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1981). “The Portable Emerson: New Edition”, p.207, Penguin

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• Being a mathematician is a bit like being a manic depressive: you spend your life alternating between giddy elation and black despair.

  Steven G. Krantz

  Math, Black, Despair

  Steven G. Krantz (2017). “A Primer of Mathematical Writing: Being a Disquisition on Having Your Ideas Recorded, Typeset, Published, Read, and Appreciated, Second Edition”, p.74, American Mathematical Soc.

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• I never got a pass mark in math ... Just imagine - mathematicians now use my prints to illustrate their books.

  M. C. Escher

  Education, Book, Math

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• A mathematician would hardly call a correspondence between the set of 64 triples of four units and a set of twenty other units, "universal", while such correspondence is, probably, the most fundamental general feature of life on Earth.

  Mikhail Leonidovich Gromov

  Science, Twenties, Fundamentals

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• When the physicists ask us for the solution of a problem, it is not drudgery that they impose on us, on the contrary, it is us who owe them thanks.

  Henri Poincare

  Science, Thanks, Problem

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• Mathematicians aren't satisfied because they know there are no solutions up to four million or four billion, they really want to know that there are no solutions up to infinity.

  Andrew Wiles

  Four, Want, Infinity

  "Andrew Wiles on Solving Fermat". www.pbs.org. November 1, 2000.

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• How do we convince people that in programming simplicity and clarity - in short: what mathematicians call elegance - are not a dispensable luxury, but a crucial matter that decides between success and failure?

  Edsger Dijkstra

  Luxury, People, Simplicity

  Edsger W. Dijkstra (2012). “Selected Writings on Computing: A personal Perspective”, p.347, Springer Science & Business Media

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• Some of you may have met mathematicians and wondered how they got that way.

  Tom Lehrer

  Science, May, Way

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• They ask how the universe is arranged, philosophers, mathematicians, and they draw pretty pictures, impossibilities on the page. They save phenomena by telling one ugly lie after another, epicycles upon epicycles, and the fools care not. It is not enough, I tell you, to ask how the cosmos is designed. We must ask why.

  Robin Wasserman

  Life, Lying, Pages

  Robin Wasserman (2012). “The Book of Blood and Shadow”, p.325, Knopf Books for Young Readers

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• But what exceeds all wonders, I have discovered four new planets and observed their proper and particular motions, different among themselves and from the motions of all the other stars; and these new planets move about another very large star [Jupiter] like Venus and Mercury, and perchance the other known planets, move about the Sun. As soon as this tract, which I shall send to all the philosophers and mathematicians as an announcement, is finished, I shall send a copy to the Most Serene Grand Duke, together with an excellent spyglass, so that he can verify all these truths.

  Galileo Galilei

  Stars, Moving, Science

  "Sidereus Nuncius, Or The Sidereal Messenger". Book by Galileo Galilei, March 13, 1610.

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• Wormholes were first introduced to the public over a century ago in a book written by an Oxford mathematician. Perhaps realizing that adults might frown on the idea of multiply connected spaces, he wrote the book under a pseudonym and wrote it for children. His name was Charles Dodgson, his pseudonym was Lewis Carroll, and the book was Through The Looking Glass.

  Michio Kaku

  Children, Book, Glasses

  Michio Kaku (1999). “Visions: How Science Will Revolutionize the 21st Century”, p.340, Oxford Paperbacks

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• It really is worth the trouble to invent a new symbol if we can thus remove not a few logical difficulties and ensure the rigour of the proofs. But many mathematicians seem to have so little feeling for logical purity and accuracy that they will use a word to mean three or four different things, sooner than make the frightful decision to invent a new word.

  Gottlob Frege

  Mean, Science, Decision

  Gottlob Frege (1952). “Translations from the Philosophical Writings of Gottlob Frege”

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• Mathematicians boast of their exacting achievements, but in reality they are absorbed in mental acrobatics and contribute nothing to society.

  Ogyu Sorai

  Math, Reality, Achievement

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• A mathematician's work is mostly a tangle of guesswork, analogy, wishful thinking and frustration, and proof, far from being the core of discovery, is more often than not a way of making sure that our minds are not playing tricks.

  Gian-Carlo Rota

  Hard Work, Science, Frustration

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• It is evidently equally foolish to accept probable reasoning from a mathematician and to demand from a rhetorician demonstrative proofs.

  Aristotle

  Science, Demand, Logic

  Aristotle (2009). “The Nicomachean Ethics”, p.4, OUP Oxford

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